At the time of writing this chapter, Joe Beckett is the Heavy-weight Champion of England, and has been ever since the contest described below when, on February 27th, 1919, he first met Bombardier Wells. He is not a very good champion. His skill is not of the first order, and he has neither the height nor weight to supply his deficiencies. Carpentier disposed of him in a round, because Carpentier is incomparably the better boxer. Wells is also a better boxer so far as skill—one might almost say “mere” skill—goes, but as some one said of him once, “He’s too bally refined,” which is a better description of the Bombardier than most loose generalisations. He is too bally (and I might dare also to add—“blinking”) refined, both in his style of boxing and in his appearance. The old-time pug-faced bruiser is dying out, not only because men no longer fight with their bare knuckles, but because their skill is so much greater in defence than it used to be, that a broken nose is a comparatively rare accident; and modern surgery can make a job of the worst battered faces. Your opponent aims chiefly for those places which are most susceptible to temporary but overwhelming effect—the jaw and the mark. The most terrific blows on either spot do not produce disfigurement. What is known as a “thick ear” is common enough still—many amateurs have it: but Wells has managed to avoid even that. His profile might easily be called Greek—at all events by some one who had once seen a photograph of Praxitéles’ Hermes and had rather forgotten it. Even Carpentier, whose personal appearance is discussed much as a good-looking actor’s, and by the same sort of people, looks, at close quarters, more of a bruiser than does Wells. 171

Punch chose to be amusing on this subject not long before the war, satirising the old and new methods of the manner in which celebrities of the ring were photographed. In one drawing you see the old bruiser, a doughty ruffian, stripped to the waist, with a flattened nose, beetle-browed, with a long aggressive chin, piggy eyes and short-cropped hair; in the other you have a smiling young man dressed in the last palpitating extremity of fashion, with longish hair brushed back from a somewhat noble brow, whilst beside him a beautiful young woman smiles into a baby’s cot. The source of Mr. Punch’s inspiration was not far to seek.

In the old days a boxer was portrayed at his job just as actors and actresses were, because his job it was that interested people. And like actors and actresses he is still photographed at his job. But to-day just as you will see in the illustrated papers photographs of theatrical people playing quite irrelevant games of golf or making hay which has nothing to do with the point, so you will see photographs of feather-weight champions dandling purely inapposite infants. It is an age when people like to assure themselves (for some inscrutable reason) that show-people are just exactly like people who are not on show.

For good or for ill, boxing has become more and more a matter of exact science in which the quick use of brains has, to some extent, superseded purely physical qualities. And a new type of professional boxer has therefore been evolved. Nevertheless, it is worth observing here that the most important quality of all for success in the ring remains unchanged from the very dawn of fist-fighting, a quality possessed by Tom Johnson, by Jem Belcher, by Tom Spring, Sayers, Fitzsimmons, Carpentier—what we call “character.”

Now Joe Beckett (to continue for a moment this unseemly discussion of other men’s personal appearance) is in the old tradition of English champions. He “looks a bruiser.” This is largely due, no doubt, to much rough and tumble fighting in his youth, when he travelled with a booth, which is still (as it has been in the past) a first-rate school for a hardy young bruiser. In this way he won a great many contests, which have never been 172 recorded, and then began a regular career of no particular distinction in 1914. In the following year he retired after fighting Pat O’Keefe for eight rounds. In 1917 he was knocked out also in eight rounds by Frank Goddard, on whom, however, he had his revenge in two rounds two years later. He lost on points to Dick Smith, who was once a policeman and amateur champion, after a contest of twenty rounds. Indeed the people who beat Beckett were better known and better boxers than the people whom he beat. But all this time he was improving as a boxer and getting fitter and stronger.

When he entered the ring at the Holborn Stadium with Bombardier Wells he was, as they say, a picture. He was in perfect, buoyant health; a mass of loose, easy, supple muscle slid and rolled under his bronzed and shining skin, he was obviously eager and ready for a good fight.

Wells led off with his academic straight left, and landed lightly. Joe Beckett dodged the next blow, came close in and sent in a hot right-hander with a bent and vigorous arm to the body. Wells doubled up and went down. On his rising Beckett went for him again, put another right on the body and followed it quickly with a severe punch rather high on the jaw which knocked Wells down again for a count of nine. Beckett ought to have beaten him then, but Wells boxed with great pluck and covered himself with care. During the rest of that round he never took another blow, and, after a rest, came up for the second fully recovered. Beckett rushed at him clumsily, trying to get close, and Wells used his long reach with much skill and promptitude, propping him off, hitting him with his clean and sure straight left, moving quickly on his feet, so that, try as he would, Beckett failed to come to close quarters. Just at the end of the round Wells gave his man a really hard blow on the chin which made Beckett exceedingly glad to hear the bell which announced time. And in the third round, too, Wells kept his opponent at a distance, boxing brilliantly, and adding up points in his own favour. In the fourth Wells was really happy. He had suppressed Beckett, he thought; and sent a hard right-hander to the jaw which would 173 have staggered less hard a man. But Beckett is very strong, and replied with a couple of body-blows, without, however, d............